The Lion King on EW

GT Master™ | Simba™

Posted on 2/10/2007, 20:49

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Questi articoli sulla genesi e il successo del Re Leone in USA e nel mondo sono apparsi l'8 Giugno del 1994. Facendo una ricerca ho scoperto la loro esistenza e volevo proporverli per sapere cosa ne pensavate. Premetto che sono lunghi ed in inglese e quindi successivamente avranno bisogno di una traduzione in italiano ma intanto per chi sa l'inglese può gustarseli.

Entertainment Weekly Jul 08, 1994

Cover Story
MANE ATTRACTIONS
AFTER BATTLING HAZARDS ON ALL SIDES, DISNEY'S AMBITIOUS THE LION KING COMES TO RULE THE BOX OFFICE
By Steve Daly

At any showing in any of the 2,550 theaters now playing Walt Disney Pictures' The Lion King, it's the gag virtually guaranteed to bring down the house: Late in the film, lion Simba asks his meerkat friend Timon, a nervous, weasel-like creature, to lure away a pack of hungry hyenas. ''Whaddya want me to do,'' the little guy sputters, ''dress in drag and do the hula?'' Cut to Timon in a grass skirt warbling ''Hawaiian War Chant.'' Kaboom-the audience goes off like a powder keg. * But is Jonathan Roberts, one of three Lion King screenwriters, satisfied? Of course not. ''I wish we'd had Timon in a coconut bra, like Ray Walston in South Pacific,'' he says. ''That would've been funny.'' There's no stifling the urge to improve in the perfectionist world of Disney feature animation, where okay means inadequate, better is getting there, and socko just might do. In the four years it took 600 artists and technicians to bring The Lion King to the screen (at an estimated cost of $40 million, though insiders say it cost more), there's nary a shot, a line of dialogue, or a musical moment in Simba's journey to kingship that wasn't built, torn out, rebuilt, tinkered with, fixed again, and maybe fixed a few times more. In fact, in a Hollywood dominated by star-driven, megabudget projects rushed from script to screen for a short-term killing, long-view meticulousness is Disney's magic formula. No other production unit expends quite the same methodical effort to craft crowd- pleasing movies. ''With live action, you have eight or 12 weeks to do it as best you can,'' says Matthew Broderick, the voice of grown-up Simba. ''Maybe you do two days of reshoots. But Disney's got the money to keep at these forever till they're happy. I mean, I worked on Simba on and off over the course of two years.'' (Not that he got much cash for it; one thing Disney doesn't splurge on is star salaries. Says Broderick: ''I get all that tie-in merchandise for free, I think, and that's about it.'') ''There are always changes, but never so many as on this one,'' says Andreas Deja, supervising animator of regicidal villain Scar. ''One day, I just ran away. I said, 'I can't deal with this. When you know what scenes are going in the movie and what aren't, you tell me, and I'll come back and animate for you.' I've never done anything like that before.'' These days, Disney animators can afford to be a tad temperamental. Look at the money they're bringing in: The escalating fortunes grossed worldwide in theaters by the studio's last three animated musicals-The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin-amount to $181.7 million, $349 million, and $485.5 million, respectively, plus they racked up combined home-video retail sales of an estimated $1.4 billion. Now The Lion King stands poised to outpace all other Disney features at the box office, grossing $40.9 million in its first three days of wide release last weekend. It's the studio's biggest opening tally ever, and the fourth- biggest in movie history (behind Jurassic Park, Batman Returns, and Batman). And that's merely the start of Lion's share of revenues. Judging from the sales of Disney's other classics on cassette, the studio will probably net an additional $250 million when the movie comes to video. Merchandise and theme-park tie-ins? Half a billion, easily. But Disney being Disney, that's just round one. Unless humanity ceases to bear children, there's the promise of lucrative reissues into the 21st century. None of Walt Disney's features- not even 1937's groundbreaking Snow White, which cost $2 million and grossed four times that in its initial release-came close to returning such a yield so fast. At the epicenter of the cashquake stands caffeine-fueled studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, 43, who, by all accounts, relishes running Disney's animation division far more than he does tracking Hollywood's ego-infested live-action jungle. Those who speculate Katzenberg is itchy for a bigger post at another studio say it's his 'toon darlings that could keep him at Disney. In the crushingly complex production logistics of animated features, he seems to have found a match for his relentlessly detail-oriented energies (on occasion he scheduled Lion King review meetings for 6 a.m., but codirectors Rob Minkoff and Roger Allers insisted he wait until 7 or 8). ''These things are like the opposite of peeling an onion,'' Katzenberg enthuses. ''We add layer after layer after layer.'' King's makers, from art directors to film editors, praise Katzenberg's managerial instincts, his nose for rooting out trouble spots in the story line (if not hitting on solutions), and the indefatigability of his tough love. But is Katzenberg really the heart of Disney animation's success, or just the head? Codirector Minkoff, who, like his partner, Allers, has worked at the studio for roughly a decade, laments that in the rush to analyze what makes Disney cartoons tick, many in the press have looked at a vast creative team and chosen to lionize one person: Jeffrey Katzenberg. ''Although Jeffrey is very, very crucially involved,'' says Minkoff, ''he spends literally maybe an hour a week looking at stuff we've already done and helping shape it from there. That is one hundredth of 1 percent of the work that goes on here.'' The root of all Disney cartoon lucre doesn't lie in Burbank, where Katzenberg and other executives work in wood-paneled splendor, surrounded by groomed lawns. No, most of the creative types currently toil about four miles to the southeast, in the smoggy industrial park of Glendale. There 700 artists labor in nine single-story converted warehouses surrounded chiefly by asphalt. (Another 180 work in Disney's Eastern colony in Orlando.) The animation department landed in Glendale back in 1985, when it was bumped off the main lot by new CEO Michael Eisner. Fallout from the big-budget disaster The Black Cauldron (one "Disney Classic" that's yet to be reissued in theaters or on tape) hung heavy in the air, but Roy Disney Jr., Walt's nephew and now vice chairman of Disney's board of directors, made Eisner promise he'd give the division a chance to reinvent itself. "We never actually discussed shutting down the animation department altogether," says Disney. "Had we made another bad movie, I think the discussion would have occurred." In the decade since, Roy Disney, Katzenberg, and a group of new executives have staged an astonishing comeback. They've put memorable tunes into their films again-except for 1990's adventure The Rescuers Down Under, which grossed $27.8 million and was considered a dud (lesson: no more nonmusicals). They've increased the worldwide animation staff from a worn-down 150 to nearly 1,000, with swanky new digs nearly ready back in Burbank and no end to expansion in sight (six features are due by 1998, including Pocahontas next summer and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for Christmas 1995). They've also established their rallying cry-story, story, story-and they'll spend up to two years in preproduction working out the plot. If planning is practically a religion at Disney animation, then the making of The Lion King was at times an extraordinary test of faith. "This feature probably had more obstacles thrown in the way of our expectations for it than any other we've made here," says Katzenberg. Stumbling block No. 1: For the first time since 1970's The Aristocats, Disney was making a cartoon feature not based on an established tale-a built-in safety net for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Equally thorny was the question of how-or whether-the creatures in this savanna should sing. When George Scribner (Oliver & Company) was assigned to direct in 1991, he envisioned the coming-of-age tale as very serious, very African, very un-pop. But while he was developing a naturalistic story sans showstoppers, top animation execs were consulting with lyricist Tim Rice about turning The Lion King into a more conventional musical, and courting Elton John to write the melodies. For months, the top brass nixed Scribner's concepts. Finally, they nixed Scribner. "George was taking it in a direction everyone seemed to have agreed on," says animator Mike Surrey, who choreographed most of Timon's wise-guy shtick. "When that direction changed, it didn't seem he'd be able to change with it." Beast producer Don Hahn was brought in to take up the baton, along with first-time feature directors Allers, a story expert, and Minkoff, an animation ace. The task of reshaping Scribner's Hamlet-on-the-Serengeti into a bouncy yet movingly mythical hero's journey weighed heavily on story supervisor Brenda Chapman. Meeting the mandate for big production numbers was toughest. "We sort of rebelled at having King Mufasa break out in song," she says. "I don't know what James Earl Jones' singing voice would sound like, but he was so regal. To have him go 'aaahh, aaahh' all of a sudden would just kill it." Meanwhile, news of difficulties with King left many of Disney's most experienced animators quietly padding away from the project. "Here we were, a lotta newer guys, faced with the task of doing a film that nobody really wanted to work on," says Tony Bancroft, supervising animator of Timon's warthog pal, Pumbaa. "People kept saying, 'Boy, I feel sorry for you!' (and left us) definitely feeling like we were the B team." How did the runt of the litter grow up to be so strong? Say it again: story, story, story. One of the techniques unique to Disney animation is the constant trying out of scenes, a ritual that works much like the mounting of a stage show. All through the painfully slow procedure of working music into Lion and chucking out dead-end plot elements (such as a trio of childhood pals who were to grow up with Simba), the directors were, in effect, always in full dress rehearsal. "We're actually sort of making the movie even in that initial phase, on the (story) boards," says Minkoff. Each scene is rendered in small sketches attached to huge sheets of particleboard, with the dialogue written beneath each illustration. When successive rounds of executives stop in to see how it's shaping up-Minkoff calls them "the Jeffrey tasters"-the directors and animators "pitch" the board, performing the parts. "It's much easier to know what you think of that than it would be reading a script," says Minkoff. "If an idea works, it stays on the wall." "Our in-house story department is the totally unsung thing about our process," says Tom Schumacher, Disney's VP of feature animation development. "They're artists who can also write." On King especially, it was this core ^ of staff artists-17 are named in the credits-who pulled together material from the screenwriters, the executives, and the directors and kept the tone consistent. "A lot of the characters' personality traits come out of that process, because the storyboard artist lives with a character for a long time," says production designer Chris Sanders, who "boarded" several sequences. In fact, despot Scar's fascistic paean to usurpers, "Be Prepared" (gamely sung by Jeremy Irons), grew out of one sketch by story staffer Jorgen Klubien that pictured Scar as Hitler. The directors ran with the concept and worked up a Triumph of the Will-style mock-Nuremberg rally, uncertain whether Katzenberg would go for it. Perhaps they didn't know that at age 20, Katzenberg had helped manage New York City mayor John Lindsay's 1972 presidential campaign. The political allegory tickled him completely.

Well, almost completely: One of the finished shots of goose-stepping hyena stooges got blown up and cropped tighter in the final release prints. "I heard they got cold feet," says Scar animator Deja. "Too over-the-top, I guess, which is what I loved about it." The decision appears to have been an aesthetic one and not the result of any audience reaction (though Disney animation certainly solicits more of that than other studios, says editor Tom Finan; starting last November, 11 test screenings were held for Lion, ranging from kid-heavy matinees to late-night date crowds). Still, says Deja, the scene makes its point as is. "It's adult, you know? It says to people, we don't do girls with little birds on their fingers going 'lalalalala' anymore." Nothing drives that message home harder than the film's most disturbing moment: the murder of Mufasa by Scar as Simba looks on. The scene is so strong that retired animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston objected when they were invited in for a look. "They didn't think it was such a good idea to show Simba approaching his father's dead body," says Deja. "They said, 'Leave it off screen, the way we did in Bambi.'" Such soft-pedaling would be a mistake, argues codirector Allers, whose own father died a few years before production began. "I don't think it's wrong for people to cry in a movie. If things like death are upsetting to children, I think movies are a pretty good way of exploring it. You go with your parents, hopefully, and maybe afterwards you talk about it." Movies you can talk about afterward- that's something Hollywood doesn't / give audiences very often, especially in summertime. And whether or not you leave The Lion King consumed with questions about life, death, and the way the Disney folks tried to get it all down, you can be sure that in Glendale, they're taking another meeting about it right now. *

Box Office
THE LION SWEEPS TONIGHT

The Lion King may have grabbed the lion's share of attention and grosses last weekend, but rather than chewing up the competition, it led the pack to a record nonholiday weekend. The $98 million overall box office take was the second-biggest nonholiday gross in history-and was up an amazing 45 percent over the previous weekend. The Flintstones became the first summer picture to sail past the $100 million mark; Speed-along with The Lion King-is expected to follow. The strong weekend only made Wyatt Earp's dismal $7.5 million opening look shabbier; although Kevin Costner's name was above the title, the three- hour-plus Western was battered by negative reviews. Weekend Gross to Weeks in Gross Top 20 Date Release

1 $40.9 The Lion King Walt Disney, Animated $44.7 2 2 $12.4 Speed 20th Century Fox, Keanu Reeves $55.4 3 3 $12.1 Wolf Columbia, Jack Nicholson $37.5 2 4 $7.5 Wyatt Earp Warner Bros.,Kevin Costner $7.5 1 5 $6.1 The Flintstones Universal, John Goodman $104.9 5 6 $4.6 City Slickers II Columbia, Billy Crystal $30.4 3 7 $3.6 Maverick Warner Bros., Mel Gibson $80.0 6 8 $3.1 Getting Even With Dad MGM,Ted Danson $11.3 2 9 $1.9 Renaissance Man Touchstone, Danny DeVito $20.6 4 10 $1.3 The Cowboy Way Universal, Woody Harrelson $15.6 4 11 $1.1 When a Man Loves a Woman Touchstone, Meg Ryan $44.3 9 12 $1.0 Beverly Hills Cop III Paramount, Eddie Murphy $39.4 5 13 $0.9 The Crow Miramax, Brandon Lee $46.4 7 14 $0.8 Four Weddings and a Funeral Gramercy, Hugh Grant $47.6 16 15 $0.5 Schindler's List Universal, Liam Neeson $94.5 28 16 $0.5 Widows' Peak Fine Line, Mia Farrow $3.5 7 17 $0.2 Little Buddha Miramax, Keanu Reeves $3.2 5 18 $0.2 3 Ninjas Kick Back TriStar, Swan Fox $11.1 8 19 $0.2 Blank Check Buena Vista, Brian Bonsall $29.7 20 20 $0.2 Crooklyn Universal, Alfre Woodard $12.8 7

Weekend Per-Screen No. of Average Top 10 / Per Screen Screens

1 $16,022 The Lion King Walt Disney 2,552 2 $5,909 Speed 20th Century Fox 2,103 3 $5,718 Wolf Columbia 2,117 4 $4,058 Wyatt Earp Warner Bros. 1,859 5 $2,580 The Flintstones Universal 2,368 6 $2,532 Little Buddha Miramax 96 7 $2,434 Widows' Peak Fine Line 187 8 $2,057 City Slickers II Columbia 2,243 9 $1,768 Maverick Warner Bros. 2,056 10 $1,765 Four Weddings and a Funeral Gramercy 480

Audience polling information provided by Cinemascore *Weekend of June 24-26 (All dollar figures in millions)

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StePanda

Posted on 3/10/2007, 19:32

The Blu Lion

Group: Regina

Posts: 19,416

Location: Terra e Mar Ligure

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Accidenti *___* che ricerca... e quanta roba...
Complimenti per la ricerca svolta =D Se sapessi L'inglese l'avrei già letto tutto! E' sicuramente molto interessante e ci sono segnati tutti gli incassi del 1994. E poi è storico =3 Senza dimenticarci le dietro le quinte.
Grazie GT!

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GT Master™ | Simba™

Posted on 3/10/2007, 20:13

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CITAZIONE (Squiddi (Panda) @ 3/10/2007, 20:32)

Di nulla

. Pensa che l'ho scoperto dall'immagine di copertina poi un link tira l'altro e sono arrivato a quegli articoli. Un giorno li tradurrò per renderli più accessibili a tutti.Cmq si è datato sono articoli scritti proprio quando è uscito il Re Leone nelle sale quindi più storico di così si muore. :Heppy: